The Perils of Ignoring History
GLASS, ANDREW J.
THE MIDEAST TUG OF WAR-1 The Perils of Ignoring History BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington A vaporous fog produced by the clash of myth and reality blankets both sides of the latest struggle...
...Arab firebrands speak of Saddam as a modern-day Saladin...
...One side carries his own portrait...
...The networks have yet to define their role in our hypertechnological age should events go the other way, however, to war...
...The British had placed Faisal's grandfather, Faisal I, on the Iraqi throne after the French dumped him as King of Syria...
...Andrew J. Glass is head of the Cox Newspapers bureau in Washington...
...Most Arabs believeMoscow did the job...
...If the confrontation with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were resolved by a truce today, within hours of the bargain the networks would no doubt air polls on how the deal has gone over with American voters...
...In the White House and in theU.S...
...Now that instant replay has become old hat, there is talk of fitting NFL quarterbacks with wireless mikes...
...The Iraqi crisis raised prices, helping the Soviets to rebuild their depleted hard-currency reserves...
...These broadcasts are designed to remind them of the comforts of home and frighten them with the horrors of the desert...
...Where appropriate, they exposed the stupidity and arrogance of the military brass...
...But its operations are swiftly brought to a halt when the Soviet Union backs the Arab dictator with nuclear threats...
...That paragraph fits today's realities —until you come to the dénouement...
...The Soviets have helped shape the instantaneous quality of the confrontation by leasing their Middle East Statsionar-12 satellite to CNN...
...In September 1192 Richard the LionHearted, encamped at the gates of Jerusalem, made a truce with Saladin, his Muslim foe...
...He mints a special gold coin for the occasion...
...That the Soviet economy is in awful shape is a well-understood axiom in every major capital—except, perhaps, Baghdad...
...Abdullah's grandson, also named Hussein, rules Jordan amid a tense swirl of Bedouins and Palestinians...
...The best war correspondents told the story of the GIs who did the real fighting...
...Many print people, fairly early on, saw that conflict as rooted in official lies and corruption...
...Any hope of recovery depends on foreign credits and technology...
...For his part, George Bush came into his manhood as the Axis trampled through Europe, Africa and the Far East in search of power and plunder...
...Further, the strife-torn Islamic Republic of Azerbaijan plays much the same role in the Soviet economy as Texas does in the United States, and the possibility of a resurgent Iran deciding to "annex" Azerbaijan in a period of Soviet weakness cannot be ignored by Moscow...
...It could prove to be a critical strategic error...
...In 1958, as a young man, he saw Iraq's young Hashemite monarch, Faisal II, murdered by Army officers in his Baghdad palace...
...If war is like football, will the networks eventually wire the generals...
...Faisal I's brother, Abdullah, served as Jordan's King until he was murdered in Jerusalem in 1951 by Arab extremists...
...Saddam Hussein carries the heaviest baggage...
...But the deep distrust between the military and the journalists, bred a generation ago in a distant Southeast Asian land, remains an unshakable legacy...
...In the present era of telediplomacy, we take for granted television's domination...
...Consider the following scenario: A ruthless despot rises to power in the Middle East after the fall of a pro-Western regime...
...All this furnishes few illuminating insights into the region's blood-drenched history or current condition...
...Indeed, how deeply would America be involved if Iraq had sought to corner the world's fig market...
...Then it becomes clear that this was a different time, when the Soviets were in a different mode and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser was their client...
...Lawrence led the 1916 Arab revolt against the Turks...
...After the opening days of wall-to-wall video, would anchormen be tempted to say: "Wenowpause briefly in our Uve coverage of this poison gas attack to bring you a word from our sponsor...
...Many months passed before the English knew their Crusader King had failed to capture the Holy City...
...Senate he has been compared with Adolf Hitler...
...THE MIDEAST TUG OF WAR-1 The Perils of Ignoring History BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington A vaporous fog produced by the clash of myth and reality blankets both sides of the latest struggle in the Middle East...
...In fact, the new Soviet role has several facets...
...In 1961, with the British protectorate over oil-rich Kuwait about to expire, the Iraqi strongman of the time, Abdul Karim Qassim, demanded the merger of Kuwait into Iraq...
...Meanwhile, images of heads of state, hostages and soldiers bounce across 24 time zones through an electronic hall of mirrors, spawning fresh myths...
...But Saddam has chosen the Nebuchadnezzar legacy as his own...
...From 22,300 miles above the earth, a necklace of high-tech satellites beams back signals that frame the crisis in " real time...
...For a vast audience, Radio Baghdad dwells upon "aggression against the land of Mecca and Medina"—which, with Jerusalem, are the holy cities of Islam...
...And their belief, coupled with an abundant flow of arms, served to bolster Soviet prestige throughout the region for more than three decades...
...Most Americans think pressure from Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 forced Britain, France and Israel to give up their joint effort to regain control of the nationalized Suez Canal from Nasser...
...But the Bible leaves no doubt that he captured Jerusalem from the Israelites in 586 BCE—according to the scripture, as God's chosen instrument against wrongdoers...
...The President admits that this is a clash over oil as well...
...Qassim was murdered in 1963 by Saddam'sBaath Party faction...
...Writing off its Baghdad connection has contributed to the Kremlin's retaining the confidence it has nurtured...
...This has allowed Iraq, a recipient of Statsionar-12 transmissions, to keep abreast of developments and respond to each turn of the screw...
...Whenever the broken crockery from the Soviet Middle East turnaround is swept away, Moscow's grateful partners should be disposed to rebuild its kitchen...
...On another electronic front, widely accessible medium-wave radio broadcasts have borne the thrust of Iraq's propaganda effort in the Arab world...
...Some U.S...
...They yanked them when the Arab League, including Jordan, formed its own military shield...
...Already, multinational oil companies have invested billions of dollars to develop oil reserves in Kazakhstan and neighboring Siberia...
...A reign of terror ensued in Baghdad that eclipsed even the savage butchery of the Iraqi Hashemite family five years earlier...
...While grabbing oil holdings, he fans the flames of Pan-Arab nationalism...
...Tom Shales, the Washington Post's TV critic, wonders how long it will be before Saddam is offered up to Phil Donahue and his counterparts as a "guest...
...World War II had its "newsreels...
...the other bears a likeness of Nebuchadnezzar, who was born nearly six centuries before Christ...
...A multinational force forms to check his vaulting ambition...
...politicians seem prepared to assume the chore should the American troop commitment stretch from weeks to months...
...To succeed, such ventures require both high prices and confident investors...
...Cuneiform fragments suggest that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt...
...Iraq also beams its version of World War II's Tokyo Rose to the troops in Saudi Arabia...
...It is out of this history—soaked in oil riches, bloody revenge and revolt—that Saddam has risen to engage Bush...
...They never took the enemy's side...
...Why did they decide to ditch him after his blitzkrieg takeover of puny Kuwait...
...We ignore it at our peril...
...Potential threats of this kind undoubtedly persuaded Mikhail S. Gorbachev to follow in the footsteps of Peter the Great and bond Russia once more to the prosperous European and Atlantic community...
...Essentially, though, that conflict was covered by print people...
...That is why it is so natural for Bush to equate the deployment of military forces in the Middle East with the need to protect, as he puts it, "our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom and the freedom of friendly countries around the world...
...Over the last several years Saddam has been staging a festival at the ancient capital of Babylon, near Baghdad...
...The problem lies in determining the true "sponsor": There ought to be a better one than the U.S...
...Their father, Hussein, governed Mecca, and along with the legendary T.E...
...Once Walter Cronkite of CBS News came to agree, the American effort fell apart...
...Iraq, seized from the Ottoman Turks by Britain, did not become a country in its own right until 1932, when George Bush was a schoolboy...
...Please stay with us...
...In Saudi Arabia, Pentagon public relations baby-sitters circulate sign-up sheets among eager correspondents, offering limited access to selected events...
...That is the myth President Bush must undermine if "our way of life" is to prevail...
...That is the context in which Soviet support for President Bush's drive to thwart Iraq should be seen...
...For eight long years during his war against a formidable Iran, the Russians backed Saddam with thousands of tanks and missiles...
...Like many young citizen-soldiers who fought in World War II, he felt that costly struggle could have been averted—if only Western democracies had resisted the dictators while they were still relatively weak...
...It was not until our times that the ancient exodus to Babylon of the descendants of Judah was reversed...
...By Vietnam, the balance began to swing from print to video...
...The Kremlin reversal appears to be the sole piece of the geopolitical puzzle the wily Saddam failed to anticipate...
...The British sent troops...
...government...
Vol. 73 • September 1990 • No. 11
